Abstract

Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to represent one’s own and others’ cognitive and affective mental states. Recent imaging studies have aimed to disentangle the neural networks involved in cognitive as opposed to affective ToM, based on clinical observations that the two can functionally dissociate. Due to large differences in stimulus material and task complexity findings are, however, inconclusive.
Here, we investigated the neural correlates of cognitive and affective ToM in psychologically healthy male participants (n = 39) using functional brain imaging (fMRI), whereby the same set of stimuli was presented for all conditions (affective, cognitive and control), but associated with different questions prompting either a cognitive or affective ToM inference. Direct contrasts of cognitive versus affective ToM showed that cognitive ToM recruited the precuneus and cuneus, as well as regions in the temporal lobes bilaterally, which are known to contribute to self-other distinction. Affective ToM, in contrast, involved a neural network comprising prefrontal cortical structures, as well as smaller regions in the posterior cingulate cortex and the basal ganglia. Notably, these results were complemented by a multivariate pattern analysis (leave one study subject out), yielding a classifier with an accuracy rate of more than 85% in distinguishing between the two ToM-conditions. The regions contributing most to successful classification corresponded to those found in the univariate analyses.
The study contributes to the differentiation of neural patterns involved in the representation of cognitive and affective mental states of others.

Bilder

Bibtex

@ARTICLE{Schlaffke:HBM14,
author = {Schlaffke, Lara and Lissek, Silke and Lenz, Melanie and Juckel, Georg and Schultz, Thomas and
Tegenthoff, Martin and Schmidt-Wilcke, Tobias and Br{\"u}ne, Martin},
title = {Shared and non-shared neural networks of cognitive and affective theory-of-mind: a neuroimaging
study using cartoon picture stories},
journal = {Human Brain Mapping},
year = {2014},
abstract = {Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to represent one’s own and others’ cognitive and
affective mental states. Recent imaging studies have aimed to disentangle the neural networks
involved in cognitive as opposed to affective ToM, based on clinical observations that the two can
functionally dissociate. Due to large differences in stimulus material and task complexity findings
are, however, inconclusive.
Here, we investigated the neural correlates of cognitive and affective ToM in psychologically
healthy male participants (n = 39) using functional brain imaging (fMRI), whereby the same set of
stimuli was presented for all conditions (affective, cognitive and control), but associated with
different questions prompting either a cognitive or affective ToM inference. Direct contrasts of
cognitive versus affective ToM showed that cognitive ToM recruited the precuneus and cuneus, as well
as regions in the temporal lobes bilaterally, which are known to contribute to self-other
distinction. Affective ToM, in contrast, involved a neural network comprising prefrontal cortical
structures, as well as smaller regions in the posterior cingulate cortex and the basal ganglia.
Notably, these results were complemented by a multivariate pattern analysis (leave one study subject
out), yielding a classifier with an accuracy rate of more than 85% in distinguishing between the two
ToM-conditions. The regions contributing most to successful classification corresponded to those
found in the univariate analyses.
The study contributes to the differentiation of neural patterns involved in the representation of
cognitive and affective mental states of others.}
}